Friday - from Mercy Team

Friday - from Mercy Team
On Friday we rode on a songtaew which means two rows. It's a truck with two benches on the back and poles on the ceiling for the people in the middle to hold onto. We rode the songthaew to the church which is the office and met some of the staff such as Lang, Pawn, Piewks, Yu, Jane, Krystal, and Pat. Dave and Sarah led us on tours. Dave took the Mercy team to see the university, the huge market, and the houses at Mahathai. Mahathai is the place were we will be doing many projects at like rebuilding roofs and cleaning up because it is a very poor neighborhood of the city. When we went to Mahathai, we rode in the back of Dave's truck. The houses there were in bad shape but the kids were so adorable and Dave knew everyone there by name. We ate our lunchs at the market. For lunch Dave ordered some different plates for us to eat. They were suprisingly very good! (Which is good for me because I am very picky :) ) When we finished we returned back to the office/church and split into our Mercy and Campus groups to start preparing for the weekend activities. After that the Mercy team left for "Futsaholic", which is 3 soccer fields on artificial grass. The fields are also screened all around so the balls and such can't go out. At the field, we met the kids from the Mahathai neighborhood. We played many activities and games with them. While we were there playing games, some of the kids would try to tell us something but we didn't understand them so we just said, "okay" or we asked someone who knew thai. After a long day of running around, yelling, and sweating in the heat we left to go back to the church/office. When we got back from the soccer field, the church/office was set up as a coffee shop which is one of the ministries here. There were many people there. We were tired and it was 10, when the coffee shop was done. We rode a songtaew back to our apartments and went to bed right away.

-- Jessica Gabrielse